I posted a song by Lily Allen yesterday, which registered her protest about Trump. I had, however, already had another of her songs buzzing around in my head for a number of days when I came across yesterday's offering.
And in light of Trump's imposition of 'extreme vetting' I'm throwing caution to the wind. This song says what needs to be said - and yes, I like the obvious pleasure with which she says it, which is, maybe, why this version was top of the pile when I searched for it. All of us the right to say the same thing with the same verve and confidence in our own skin.
To Trump.
To Erdogan.
And to May when she snuggles up to them.
And if you're offended, I'm not apologising. The time for subtlety has gone.
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‘The time for subtlety has gone.’
Quite right. Anything other than explicit and unambiguous opposition not only fails to get through, but excuses and normalises what was and should again become entirely unacceptable.
But it has to be effective opposition. We have lost out too many times to these people. We have to use our brains to understand what is going on and find ways to counteract it.
Well Richard, we always said this would happen and that we’d be girdling our loins after the vote.
As Lou Reed said you, need a ‘bus load of faith to get by’ for times like this.
Dear Richard,
This comment is not really a propos opposition to Trump and the others. Like many others, I completed an online tax return last week. Before I could do that I had to supply my passport number. This looks to me like a government scheme to join up their various databases. Should this worry us? I’m strongly opposed to tax fraud, avoidance and evasion but I am not convinced this is a necessary step.
Do you have a view?
My view is that’s absurd: you have no need to have a passport to submit a tax return
Well, try and get in if you’re not a UK passport holder. Impossible. More impermeable than the Great Wall of Mexico. Had to give up and ask an agent to file for me.
I had not realised that
It is not needed to register on the government gateway
Richard get use to it, you’re now a Uni employee and other unis require to see your original passport to get travelling expenses paid. No passport no train fare. Even if you’re well known and visited that uni many times before.
Seriously Tony – that has never happened to me either
And I have just bee paid by another university
Official business uni – all external examining, appointment committees and invited peer review.
I’m avoiding all that as much as I can…..
Yes otherwise you won’t do research.
Exactly
And my Dean seems to realise that
Richard, Tony_B is correct, the same applies at the OU. A few years ago now we (by which I mean course teams) had the embarrasing task of demanding that any external examiner we used had to send in their passport to be “checked”, as did people we used as external assessors/critical readers and so on. This was despite the fact that in many cases we had worked with them in various capacities for many years and could fully vouch for their academic creditials. But that wasn’t/isn’t the point of this exercise, as Tony_B makes clear.
Thanks for the warning…..
The forthcoming Digital Economy Bill intends to do just that: Allow data-sharing between all govt depts. Including health data.
I suspect this is more to do with HMRC now using a 3rd party verification provider in their authentication process rather than anything particularly sinister. I gather this initiative has backfired somewhat with plenty of taxpayers struggling to get through compared with those who have and are still able to use their Gov Gateway credentials
I filed mine and my wife’s tax return without needing a passport, but we have both been registered a few years. Is it only new registrations I wonder?
With that headline I thought you’d been hacked.
I did wonder whether to use it
But today it felt right
Ten years ago I would not have dreamed of it
Professor Murphy ! Please!!
I remind you it is now the middle day of the religious weekly triumvirate . Having had Jihad Friday we are now into the Jewish Shebat in anticipation of Left Footer Sunday for the Christians still around.
Please redact and reprint on Manic Monday…….
Make it a prayer
Overturn the tables in the Temple, whatever your faith
Couldn’t agree more.
Just read a desperate email from a friend who is deeply ashamed to be American.
If I were British I would feel the same about
Mrs May cosying up to this pathetic despot, and a little concerned about the potential for that backfiring.
Also of us need to resist very loudly. The red states that elected Trump were not simply places left behind by globalisation. They were and are backwaters of racial prejudice of a kind that we need make no apology for shaming and discriminating against.
Take this extreme vetting policy and add in the fact that Trump’s Holocaust Day message didn’t even mention Jews and I think we see a pattern emerging. However, having spent a good deal of Friday reading up on the thinking/philosophy of Trump’s primary adviser, Steve Bannon, I’m not at all surprised (I recommend to readers of this blog doing the same if you have an hour or so free, Bannon is anti neoliberalism advocating instead ‘neo-traditionalism’, the signs of which are evident in every executive order we’ve seen so far).
As an aside, what a pathetic response from May – indeed even the emerging dictator that she’s just visited in Turkey was more vocal. It shows another dimension of where Brexit is taking us – to be friends with every nut-job and totalitarian state around the globe. Then again, we’ve sucked up to the Saudis for decades so we can sell them arms (as we’ve now done with Turkey) so our moral compass has just about disappeared anyway, and May now removes the final vestiges of that. Disgusting and disgraceful and the invitation to a state visit should be withdrawn forthwith.
Agreed
Im with you Richard. Say it like it is. Compared to the abuse coming from right wing trolls it is as nothing. As a lead letter in the Observer today says, its time for a ‘Hard Remain’ campaign. As woolly liberals we are sometimes too inclined to try to see and understand the other sides point of view. If we keep doing this we will just be run over. We are seeing views and actions at the extreme end, now drifting into the mainstream, that are just not acceptable and it is a waste of time trying to empathise with them, though we may need to understand what may have precipitated their growth. May’s first trips to two of the prime examples of crude fascistic leaders with little or no challenge to either of them positions her clearly on the wrong side. The Chamberlain of our time and we know where that ended
Whether it is Edmund Burke and ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’ or Martin Niemoller’s ‘First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out’, it is time to get noisy.
Let Trump come to the UK. And lets have the noisiest, largest demonstrations yet to make it quite clear how unwelcome he is and how despised the government is for inviting him
(PS Excellent Guardian event last Friday with John Harris, Varoufakis et al. Central Hall full to the brim. I was sat next to a retired GP – not exactly your stereotypical rentamob)
Robin, did you see the article by Chelsea Manning in The Guardian last week (it’s the one that got Fox News in a rant and led to a tweat from the Trumpeter)? Manning argued that one of the reasons why Obama managed to get so little of substance doen for so long was that he and the Democrats always enter negotiation on policy starting from a mark where they have already moved position (i.e. compromised) in the hope that will be sufficient to placate the Republicans only to find it never does and what comes out of the process – if anything – is therefore not a compromise at all but pretty much alwasy what Republicans want. Thus her argument was there’s no point in adopting this position anymore: go into negotiation starting from what Democrats actually want. I have to say, I thought Manning’s analysis spot on.
It has real merit
Thanks Ivan – will check it out.